by Hy Conrad
Maury took a pair of plastic gloves from one of his jacket pockets and put them on. Next out were a carbon steel chisel and a small ball-peen hammer, both newly purchased at a Village hardware store for cash. After checking one final time for anyone nearby—inside the door and out—he began to slowly, quietly attack the section of ancient wood between the doorknob and the doorjamb.
CHAPTER 41
The lock on the third-floor door proved to be more problematic than the lock on the front door. Maury spent quite a few minutes—at least two full Henry Mancinis by his calculation—on his knees, quietly chiseling one flake at a time, before the bolt by the lock mechanism was exposed enough. Then it was simply a matter of forcing the small chisel into place and easing back the bolt. It was the first time he’d ever done anything like this, and he was proud of himself.
By the time he was ten minutes into his search, both his pride and his confidence had fallen. That damned letter, those haunting three pages torn from a yellow legal pad, was nowhere. He’d emptied the file cabinet, taken every book off the bookshelves, and rifled the pages. Amy’s bedroom had been fairly neat when he walked in. Now it was strewn over with clothes thrown angrily from the drawers and the closet. The only things he had left in place were the two drawers full of eyeglasses, dozens of pairs. Maury considered it a professional courtesy, respect for the woman’s collection. Two of the frames, he noted, were classic Ellis pieces, designed by his wife.
Had he been wrong? he wondered. Where else could she have hidden it? Only at the edges of his mind did he notice the end of Henry Mancini and the lapse of the house into silence. For the second time, he made the trip from the top floor down to the third, and he was standing by the door in the main stairwell when he heard the determined pattern of footfalls coming up toward him.
“Amy Josephine Abel!”
Maury put aside his chisel and reached for his Walther P22.
The woman who arrived on the landing was short and sturdy and energetic, with hair the color of old rust. Her pink slippers and lack of a jacket told him that she was the nameless downstairs neighbor. At probably the same moment, the wood shavings by the door frame and the handgun informed her that he was up to no good.
“Who are you?” she said. There was something about her attitude. She already knew who he was. But how? There was also something about her voice.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“This is my house, Mr. Breaking and Entering. But if you turn around and leave right now, I won’t call the police.”
“You’re the woman on the phone,” he guessed and saw from her startled reaction that he was right.
She shrugged. “I’m Amy’s mother, Mr. Steinberg. I’m sure Amy’s mentioned me.”
“She hasn’t.”
Her head tilted quizzically. “Are you sure? It’s hard to believe she wouldn’t mention her own mother. We’re very close.”
“Come inside.” Maury stepped back and waved the P22 inward, like an invitation. The woman’s eyes flitted from the gun to the mess of books and papers and the shredded pillows from the sofa. “Where is it?” he demanded. “Where’s the letter?”
“What letter?”
“The letter you were blackmailing me about on the phone.”
“Oh, that letter. I’m sure I have no idea.”
“I think you do.”
“I don’t. And I’m not the woman on the phone. Her voice was much lower.” And she demonstrated. “Hello, Mr. Steinberg. Like that,” she growled. “Not like my voice at all.”
Maury couldn’t decide if the woman was really so dense or if this was some ploy. “Give me the letter, or you’re dead,” he said, leveling the P22 straight at her heart. “I mean it.”
“I know you do,” the woman agreed. “Amy said you had a gun. We were debating that just this afternoon. My theory was that since you killed twice before without using a gun, you might not. Looks like the joke’s on me.” Oops! She immediately bit her lower lip. “I wasn’t supposed to know that, was I?”
“You know?”
“What do I know?” Her attitude was suddenly all innocence.
“About India. About the other one.”
“You mean the maid’s suicide?”
Maury’s mind was swimming. They knew. It wasn’t just about the forgeries anymore. He shook his head, trying to clear it, and when he focused again, she was gone, tripping down the stairs at full speed.
Fanny was aware of her effect on people, even on relatives, who were used to her and should know better, the disoriented, almost glazed look that gathered in their eyes when she hit her rhythm, the amount of energy it took to try to follow her arcane logic. She’d been anticipating another minute or two of hard-fought conversation with Maury Steinberg. But when the man’s pupils began to twitch from behind the frames of his thin tortoiseshell glasses, she knew she had to take her chance.
From nearly forty years of taking these stairs, she knew them perfectly, every uneven step. Without looking back, she tore down from the third floor to the second, then around the safety of the bend and down one more flight.
In a few seconds she would be facing another decision—out the front door to Barrow Street, into her own half of the house, or back into the communal garden? The first held the promise of freedom, but the threat of being in the open and being shot from a distance. The second held the reassurance of home and a dozen hiding places, but also the terror of being cornered, with no way out. The third seemed to be a combination. The hollowed-out block was large but familiar, with nooks everywhere. And it was semipublic, with a dozen curious neighbors attuned to every sound, looking out through their curtains, willing to open their back doors perhaps to give her sanctuary from a killer with a gun.
Her mind immediately went to Douglas What’s-His-Name, across the garden and down two houses. He was brand new to the block but as nosy as the Westons, the previous owners, who had moved away last year in order to be closer to their children in California.
Lieutenant Rawlings had arrived at the Irish Hunger Memorial with the rest of his team in two unmarked vans. He left on foot with Amy and Marcus after they handed back the vests and the earpieces and the microphones. It was a mostly silent process, with a female officer packing the equipment into the empty baby carriage she’d been pushing around for the last half hour. They signed again, acknowledging the return of the items, then joined the lieutenant on Vesey Street. The three of them walked east through the corridor of darkened office towers toward West Street.
All three kept silent until after they rounded the corner and saw the taxi stand. A single cab stood idling, its hood light illuminated.
“Why didn’t he show?” Amy asked, her inflection making it sound like an apology. She’d been fighting the urge to apologize ever since Rawlings had made the call to “scrub the action.” The only thing stopping her had been the professional way the officers had dealt with it, like it was just part of their job. Sometimes things worked; sometimes they didn’t.
“He’s probably on the run,” said the lieutenant.
“Then we have to stop him,” insisted Amy. “Alert the airports. Put a tag on his credit cards, or whatever you call it.”
“Did it five minutes ago.” Rawlings shook his head. “I would have done it earlier, but that would have entailed telling my captain. Instead, I got talked into a sting operation with a couple of civilians.”
“Oh. So you told your captain five minutes ago? I take it from your tone he wasn’t happy.”
“He wasn’t.”
“But it was worth it,” said Amy. Again making it sound like an apology. “We had to give it a shot.”
“I’m going to need the original of that letter,” said Rawlings.
“Absolutely,” said Marcus, raising his hand to hail the cab. “We can get it for you right now.”
The homicide detective shrugged. “Morning’s good enough. Unlike us, the fraud division rarely works overtime.”
“I’m sorry.” There
. She finally said it. “I pressured you into this, and it was all for nothing.”
“I’ll handle my captain.” Lieutenant Rory Rawlings displayed a wistful version of his midwestern smile, and suddenly he looked older, perhaps no older than his actual age, but no longer the arrogant teenage waiter. “There’ll be some questions about manpower and equipment. I can’t hide that. But it just reminds me why I got into this business. You were right about not wanting him to get away with murder.”
“Thanks for saying that,” said Amy. But what she was thinking was, Aw, that’s not fair. Don’t make me like you. It was hard enough five minutes ago, when I thought you were a total jerk.
“You guys have a good night,” said the lieutenant and opened up the cab door for them, just to rub it in. And when he closed the door, he didn’t slam it.
Amy gave the driver the Barrow Street address and then, for the third time, dialed her mother’s number. “No answer,” she said, hanging up before it could go to voice mail.
“You tried her cell?” asked Marcus.
“Cell and house.” And she tried the cell phone again, just to make sure.
By the time the yellow cab stopped in front of her stoop, Amy had talked herself into a comforting explanation. Fanny was upset because she hadn’t called precisely at 9:01, or whatever time her unreasonable mother thought reasonable. In retaliation, she wanted to make Amy worry the same way. Well, Amy wasn’t about to fall for it, even though she had a feeling in the pit of her stomach that there was no such strategy and that something was actually wrong.
While Marcus paid the driver, Amy made her way up the stairs. Her first glimpse through the glass of the door into the vestibule made her stop, frozen in place with her hand on the knob. “Marcus?” The word came out as a choked whisper.
Only after he had joined her did she feel brave enough to open the door and step inside. Wordlessly, they bent down to examine the chiseled-out section of doorjamb and the fresh chips of mangled wood on the tattered welcome mat.
Just inside the hall, they saw the open door leading into Fanny’s living room. Amy wanted to call out, but Marcus grabbed her elbow with one hand and put his other to his lips. Of course. Odds were that if Fanny was around to answer her, she wouldn’t be alone.
The two of them did not split up but went from room to room as quietly as possible, then up the interior stairs to the next floor, then out to the landing and up again. Amy took small comfort in the fact that there’d been nothing unusual in her mother’s half, no blood or signs of a struggle. All that comfort vanished when she saw the condition of her own door and, beyond the crippled door, the chaotic mess that was her own half. Amy felt like screaming. But she forced herself to stay silent as they tiptoed throughout the third floor, then up to the fourth.
Her bedroom was in the same decorative state as her living room and kitchen—furniture overturned, books scattered, pillows shredded, and drawers torn out. Amy didn’t realize she had so many drawers. Her greenhouse office at the rear of the house was in even worse condition, with every folder from her file cabinet opened, the contents scattered across the floor like an uneven rug. She was just making her way into the bathroom when her phone rang. It was her phone, not the throwaway, and the name on the display was Mom.
It was not Mom.
“Amy, hello.”
“Who is this?” She knew, obviously. But it took her a few seconds to process what he must know now and what he knew that she knew.
“Let’s keep it simple,” advised the voice, “just in case you’re preserving this for posterity.” He spoke with a calm, casual smugness that made Amy want to reach through the phone and strangle him.
“I’m not recording it.”
“Forgive me if I’m unconvinced. I would like my letter back now, the one you stole from my apartment.”
Despite her predicament, Amy couldn’t help feeling a little pride. Good. He hadn’t found it.
“Do you have the fifty thousand?” asked Amy, playing along with the evening’s premise.
“I have something even better,” said Maury. “A mutual acquaintance. Would you like to speak to her? Just for a second.”
There were some muffled noises on the other end, then softly . . . “Hello, dear. This is your mother speaking.” Fanny had feigned fear on many occasions: seeing her daughter go into the pool right after a meal, backseat driving as Amy tried to merge onto the Henry Hudson without slowing down. But this was the first time Amy had heard actual fear in Fanny’s voice. It was perhaps the most unsettling moment of the night.
“Mom, are you all right?”
“He has that gun we were wondering about, just for your information.”
“That’s enough.” It was Maury, back on the line. “Is your concierge friend with you? Marcus? Yes, of course he is. I need you to listen carefully to what I have to say.”
Amy listened carefully. After Maury hung up, she went into her bathroom. Could it still be here? She reached down into her wicker wastebasket, past a thick layer of balled-up tissues, and pulled out the three folded pages from the yellow pad. This had always been the perfect hiding place for her. The combination of disposable (who would hide something in a wastebasket?) and disgusting (who would reach into a moist bathroom wastebasket?) had preserved many a girlhood secret from her mother’s prying eyes.
CHAPTER 42
The three yellow pages, a Zippo lighter confiscated from Fanny in a failed effort to keep her from smoking, her smartphone, a flashlight, and Marcus. In accordance with Maury Steinberg’s instructions, Amy brought all of these down with her to the picturesquely disused fountain in the center of the garden. It was after ten when they put on their jackets and stepped out the rear door. For some reason, Amy took the precaution of locking it behind her, both the lock and the bolt.
For being technically part of the city that doesn’t sleep, the Abels’ little block of New York got to bed fairly early, at least tonight. There was no one else in the communal area, and the majority of the windows facing out onto it were dark. Here and there were just a few illuminated rectangles, lit by the flicker of TVs or the soft, steady glow of reading lamps, all of them behind curtains or blinds.
“Why here?” asked Marcus as they checked once again for any movement among the bushes and trees.
“What?” Amy was distracted, almost catatonic, unable to even process his simple question. She almost always froze at moments like this, not the best trait for a woman who kept getting herself involved in murder.
“Why here?” Marcus repeated. “Is he in one of the houses? Looking out a window?”
Amy thought for a moment, then pivoted in a slow circle, taking in the shadowy expanse of brick walls and dark glass. “That makes sense.”
“Should we call Rawlings? His men can surround the block.”
“And have my mother be a hostage in the middle of a shootout? I don’t think so.”
“It won’t come to that. Maury’s not the type.”
Before Amy could reply, her phone rang. This time it didn’t play its usual snatch of Mozart. It played a chirpy conga beat, the screen lighting up in a sky blue. There was a woosh, a pop, and a circle in the middle of the screen with an image of Fanny’s smiling face, lifted from the woman’s Facebook page. Amy was being Skyped.
She had installed the video app a month ago on both their phones, hoping they’d get in the habit of speaking face-to-face during Paisley MacGregor’s worldwide wake. But Fanny had never been enthusiastic about the video phone and had feigned ignorance of how to answer a call, even though it was no more complicated than answering her phone.
“Mom?” Amy asked the screen so tentatively.
The image was not Fanny’s, but Maury’s, staring back at her through expensive frames, with his thin face and short gray hair and unnerving scowl. “I want to see Marcus.”
Amy looked to Marcus, who was busy texting on his own phone. What the hell? But she was in no position to quibble. “Why do you want to see Marcus?�
� she vamped, speaking slowly, trying to look calm for the camera. Marcus sped up his texting.
“Don’t argue. Do it.”
She didn’t answer but held the phone at arm’s length. She spun it around the garden, and finally, when she aligned it to include Marcus, his phone was securely back in his pocket.
“Good,” said Maury. “I need to keep track of you both.”
Maury’s face took up most of the screen, but Amy scanned the room behind him, searching for anything, any clue to his whereabouts. The walls were white and well lit, as if from an unshaded overhead bulb. She glanced up from her phone and could see no brightly lit windows facing the garden. “I want to talk to my mother.”
Maury considered the request. A second later the phone jerked away, then refocused on a close-up of Fanny, a white gag, perhaps torn from a bedsheet, tied through her open mouth and around the back of her head. Her eyes were bright with fear, or with anger. It was hard to tell. “Sorry, Amy. But your mother can be quite the chatterbox.”
“Don’t hurt her,” said Marcus.
“I won’t, if we do this quickly. Marcus, hold the phone. Amy, show me the pages. Up close. I’ll know if they’re the originals.”
“Release her first,” said Marcus, trying to sound as if he was the one in control.
“Harming Mrs. Abel would do me no good—if I get what I want.”
The process would be a simple one, he explained. Marcus would focus the phone and the flashlight, making use of both hands. Amy would hold the lighter and the letter, again using two hands, poising them over the dry basin of the stone fountain. After Maury was satisfied that this was his handwritten confession, Amy would light it up with the Zippo, and all three of them would watch his problems go up in smoke.
Amy had to cock the Zippo three times before she had fire. But the pages caught quickly and evenly, with Amy lighting them on two corners, then dropping them into the stone basin. Marcus seemed to take forever, several seconds at least, to readjust the phone and the flashlight. Spiderlike lines of black ink turned gray through the orange flames. The paper crinkled into black, and the wisps of smoke reminded Amy of crisp burning leaves. It was almost mesmerizing.